Thanksgiving parades, NFL games, and New Year’s Eve countdowns could potentially see a sizable dip in viewership thanks to Netflix splitting Stranger Things Season 5 up across three, holiday-centric release dates. I’d long thought that trifurcated approach was near necessary, due to the size and scope of the final episodes, with Maya Hawke saying early on they were filming eight movies essentially. More recent rumors indicated every installment was at least 90 minutes long, and I can’t exactly say I was 1000% enthusiastic about that eventuality.
Thankfully, at least for yours truly, co-creator Ross Duffer took to Instagram to not only address those runtime reports, but also to straight up debunk them. It wasn’t an entire top-to-bottom debunking, mind you, as he only pulled back the curtain on Volume 1's four episodes. Still, it was enough to spark some relief for me and other time-restrained fans with Netflix subscriptions.
Here's the breakdown for the first rollout:
- Chapter One: The Crawl - 68 minutes
- Chapter Two: The Vanishing Of... - 54 minutes
- Chapter Three: The Turnbow Trap - 66 minutes
- Chapter Four: Sorcerer - 83 minutes
- TOTAL VOLUME ONE RUNTIME: 4 hours, 31 minutes (271 minutes)
Even though those runtimes are still pretty lofty, and would be downright ludicrous when applied to a lot of other streaming shows, I could only breath in sighs of relief after that Duffer brothers-approved reveal. I've been a huge fan of Stranger Things technically since before the first season was released, thanks to screeners, so I'm generally more excited than others whose excitement for the final season is waning or is altogether depleted due to the three-year stretch since Season 4.
The Duffers don’t like yearly TV seasons, and though their comments on that matter sparked more than a few opinionated reactions online, at least that helps justify why they've been so comfortable keeping fans waiting. Granted, the writers strike was a big factor this time around, but even if it hadn't happened, complaints about the actors being far older than their characters would still exist.
Some might argue that the actors wouldn't have aged so much if the seasons wouldn't take so long to come together, which wouldn't happen if the episodes didn't so often push beyond traditional runtimes. Although in that scenario, the Duffer brothers could very well just opt to produce twice the number of episodes.
No reason to delve into hypothetical scenarios, however, since we now know exactly how long the first half of Stranger Things' final season will be, and I know I'm not the only one out here who'll spend Turkey Day giving thanks for overblown rumors that get proven to be untrue.
Check out Ross Duffer's IG post below, which earned quite a few relieved and thankful comments. Sure, there were others, but I'd prefer to just believe everyone's on my side here.
The Duffers have shared previously that the fourth and eighth episodes are the longest ones of the season, which necessarily means that Chapters 5, 6, and 7 will all be shorter than 83 minutes. So unless the final final edits go wildly against expectation, none of the final season's installments will be longer than 90 minutes. Which is exactly how it should be.
Stranger Things' first four Season 5 chapters will hit Netflix's 2025 lineup starting on Thursday, November 27.
